Cover reveal for the penultimate book in the #1 bestselling Coven Series!
Coming August 27th from USA Today bestselling author Lily Luchesi
Published by Vamptasy Publishing
Cover art by Rue Volley
The dead hold the key to saving the King.
When the Coven King falls deathly ill, Harley must search through his history, and the history of everyone she once knew, in order to find the cure.
As a child, Salem Sinclair was never meant to amount to much, until he met a girl named Daphne Fraser. As Light as he was Dark, he fell in love at first sight and would do anything to please her, even if his love makes him a target.
But there is a Darkness growing, and Daphne is at the centre of the conflict. Salem must pick a side and do what is right to save the girl he loves.
Meanwhile, will Harley find out how to cure her father or will the Coven once again lose its leader?
EXCERPT:
Once the parchment had soaked up all of the blood, it began to gather in the centre. Harley watched, with Caelum peering over her shoulder, as a word began to form in vivid red: “Apocynaceae.”
“Is … is it broken?” Caelum asked. “I don’t even think that’s a word.”
“It’s a family of plants. They’re known as dogsbane because they were once used to poison dogs,” Harley said. “But … if that’s the case, he should wake up in five minutes. The potion can cure any of the plants within that family.”
Unless you brewed it wrong, her mind taunted her. It did that sometimes, reminded her that she wasn’t as talented or special as others might make her believe. It was one of the many drawbacks of having depression and anxiety.
I brewed that potion perfectly, she said, trying to push the irrational part of her mind back. Something else is going on if he doesn’t wake.
She moved back and crossed her arms tightly around her middle, almost as if she was trying to subconsciously hug herself and get comfort. Caelum moved closer and put his arms around her, over her own. Harley revelled in his comfort, wishing that she didn’t need it so damn often. It had only been two days since they had taken down the organisation known as The Zoo. She had barely had a chance to breathe.
“Madam Maysa, what if…” She couldn’t say it.
“If it doesn’t work?” she asked. “Then we have to find out why. It could be something in his past, some abnormality within his physiology.”
“How the Hell am I supposed to do that?” Harley asked, forgetting her manners.
“There’s a way, but it’s complicated. Mrs. Donahue can show you,” Maysa said.
“And how long will it take? How long … how long does he have?” she asked. She could hear the desperate edge in her voice and hated it. She hated always being unable to control anything that happened in her life. Sure, she pretended to, but she was always a victim of fate, ever since she was conceived, and she despised it.
“Five hours, give or take, and this shouldn’t take that long,” the Medic replied. She checked her pocket watch. “You have three minutes. I will go and fetch her.”
It was obvious that the Medic did not believe that Salem would wake within three minutes any more than Harley did.
Five hours. Salem only had five hours to live. Harley’s stomach roiled and she could feel her fingertips going numb from fear and worry. If not for Caelum, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Caelum said softly. “I promise, I’m not going to let you do this alone. We’ll save Salem, you’ll see.”
“How are you so bloody optimistic?” she asked, her voice barely a gasp as tears began to gather in her eyes.
“Because once upon a time, I lived through actual Hell. Optimism and sarcasm are the only defences I have,” he replied. He turned her around to face him and held her face in his hand. “I believe in you, Princess. You can save him.”
The three minutes ticked by, and there was no change in Salem. He was still sweating, feverish, and wheezing. Mrs. Donahue entered the sickroom then, looking a bit more put together than she had when she’d initially gotten Harley. She carried a long white candle with peculiar markings along the side.
“Oh dear,” she muttered, looking at Salem as he lay there. Donahue was in her eighties, she had been Salem and Caelum’s teacher when they were children. “Madam Maysa told me you needed to see into the past, to see why he can’t be cured by the potion?”
Harley nodded.
“Then come with me. Both of you. But first you need something of his. A lock of hair will do,” she said.
Harley turned toward her father and stepped up to his pillow. “Praetrunco,” she cast, and a lock of shiny ebony hair was severed into the palm of her hand.
That done, the two of them followed Donahue down the castle stairs and into the courtyard. Harley noticed that the party had broken up, her brother and his friends were nowhere to be seen.
Harley wasn’t a person who asked a lot of questions. She found that, more often than not, when you stayed silent, you got the answers you wanted without ever having to say a word aloud.
As Donahue led them across the grounds, Harley saw where she was taking them: the Watchtower. The Watchtower was built before the magicians had made this their Coven, and was used during the First, Second, and Third Clan Wars to signal for help or exchange information with undercover magicians.
It was also, apparently, haunted.
Lily Luchesi is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of the Paranormal Detectives Series, published by Vamptasy Publishing. She also has short stories included in multiple bestselling anthologies, and a successful dark erotica retelling of Dracula.
Her Coven Series has successfully topped Amazon's Hot New Releases list consecutively.
She is also the editor, curator and contributing author of Vamptasy Publishing's Damsels of Distress anthology, which celebrates strong female characters in horror and paranormal fiction.
She was born and raised in in Chicago, Illinois, and now resides in Arizona. Ever since she was a toddler her mother noticed her tendency for being interested in all things "dark". At two she became infatuated with vampires and ghosts, and that infatuation turned into a lifestyle. She is also an out member of the LGBT+ community. When she's not writing, she's going to rock concerts, getting tattooed, watching the CW, or reading manga. And drinking copious amounts of coffee.
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